


said i, (i guess) i adore you

by animemouth



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Confessions, Jealousy, M/M, Teenage Dorks, Tumblr Prompt, Wordcount: 1.000-3.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-01
Updated: 2015-03-01
Packaged: 2018-03-15 19:25:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3459011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/animemouth/pseuds/animemouth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>based off a tumblr prompt to get be back into my writing groove: </p><p>'Marco being jealous because Jean keeps turning him down to hang out with mikasa instead of him. Jean is asking for advice on how to get Marco to be his boyfriend from mikasa'</p><p>(rated t for near-constant swearing)</p>
            </blockquote>





	said i, (i guess) i adore you

**Author's Note:**

> i've been gone awhile!! college is quite busy so i barely have time to draw, let alone write, but i am reworking my snk high school au but i'm not sure exactly i want to do with it.
> 
> still a bit rusty with writing for fun, but this was fun & i hope it suffices! 
> 
> (nearly 2k, will be fully edited asap!!)

marco has been staring at the black emptiness of his phone’s lock screen for the past four minutes. it hasn’t pinged with any notifications since yesterday afternoon after AP history when reiner relayed a message to him from jean. the message was literally five words long, and wouldn’t have taken him more than thirty seconds to type out and send. 

‘ _i’m busy this weekend, sorry :(_ ‘ was the exact excuse marco got, now two fridays in a row. 

his best friend had skipped off after their last period to his locker, ghosting his fingers over marco’s forearm and waving a half-assed goodbye before jogging down the squeaky linoleum stairs to his locker. he couldn’t have stopped to say he was busy? he had to tell reiner, who wasn’t even in that class with them, and whose locker was two hallways away from jean’s? 

he couldn’t pin down what he’d done wrong, or what jean was suddenly doing right, especially because mikasa ackerman had suddenly taken an interest into his moody, sarcastic best friend. mikasa was reserved and stern, but really enjoyable to talk to. she didn’t pick fights or make unnecessary, rude comments about anyone - or, if she did, she was wise enough to keep them to herself - and usually spent their lunch period between eren jaeger, her adoptive brother, and their best friend, armin arlert. she usually listened to everyone else’s conversations and observed the other eleven people at their lunch table.

marco admired her in that way and he knew jean did even more so, because he was the exact opposite of doll-eyed mikasa’s calm, cool, collected demeanor. 

the real kicker was that if mikasa had taken an actual interest in jean, after all the years of his embarrassingly blatant flirting and several failed attempts of asking her out to the movies or for pizza after school, there was no way jean would be bagging out on her to hang out with marco, like he’d been doing for an even longer period of time.

the freckled teen suddenly felt very bitter. irritation bubbled up in his chest and trickled through his veins like something he’d shot up into his arms. his chest tinged red at the mere thought of jean trying to put his hand on mikasa’s, or wrap his thin, milk white arm’s around her fit, muscular shoulders under whatever thin black shawl she was wearing that day. 

he rolled onto his stomach and lazily chucked his phone to the end of the bed where his bare feet lay, perched on top of the headboard to collect any of the three p.m. sunlight streaming through his half-closed blinds. chilly january air was seeping in through a crack in the window sill and making his arms pimple with goosebumps. if jean was there, they could crawl under the duvet and grow overheated as they shared oxygen whilst pokemon battling. 

marco looked at his phone one last time before kicking it off the bed to fall in the crack between his mattress and the wooden bedside table, where he hoped the next time he’d pick it up, a sign of hope would be displayed in white text over the screen.

 

* * *

 

_hey meet me on the soccer field today after seventh period._

marco blanked scrolled over the text again when someone kicked the back of his chair rather hard with their foot. still riding high on irritability, marco spun around to tell whoever it was to knock it the hell off, before he caught mikasa’s dark brown eyes looking up at him, shocked. 

“oh, sorry, did i kick you?” she asked quietly. her voice wasn’t timid, like one would expect. just low in register and firm, as it always was. 

marco gave a curt nod before half-assing a shrug. 

he was about to turn around before she quietly cleared her throat. 

“are you doing anything after school today?” 

_what the hell?_ “oh, um, jean wants to meet me after class, s’all. why? do you need to borrow the notes or something?”

marco almost missed the minuscule smile that momentarily spread across her peachy lips before she shook her head. she mouthed a ‘just curious’ before marco realized ms. ral staring right in his direction, a mild frown etched into her usually calm features.

mikasa slipped out of class the second the two forty-five ending bell rang. it was a tuesday afternoon so must people were either shuffling to the parking lots or dragging their feet on their way to after school practice or some club meeting they weren’t in the mood for. it was too frosty outside for physical activities and they were expecting at least one more snow before spring arrived in march.

trudging across the frosted grass and half-melted piles of dirty snow, marco caught sight of jean standing out by one of the rusted practice goal posts. he was hugging his arms close to his body, dressed in a plain black hoodie and some washed out skinny jeans with the knees worn out, new red high tops inlaced and tucked into the bottoms of his trousers. one arm came up to nervously twist one of his earrings as he caught sight of the other approaching. he half-smiled and his cheeks warmed, then dimpled.

“hey.”

“hey, uh. hi.” 

marco raised an eyebrow, almost bemused. still annoyed and a little hurt. “why did you decide to drag me out here when it’s nearly freezing instead of just meeting up in the hall after last period? i’m literally two lockers down from you.” 

jean peered down at the ground just then and shrugged. 

the older boy huffed and edged closer. his lips were a firm line before he clicked his tongue and pressed on. 

“and why haven’t you talked to be in like three weeks? did you find a new friend? is having mikasa finally notice you after nearly seven years better than continuing to keep me as a friend? hmm?” he knew he was being snippy, but his ability to care had completely dissipated. 

the blond teen looked up, the bridge of his nose and the entirety of his cheeks tinged a magenta tone spreading out across his cheekbones and jawline like watercolor to paper. 

“jesus fuck, no. i, i was trying to figure something out, and i wanted to talk to you about that. i just didn’t really know how to, i don’t know, get on the topic?”

marco snorted, almost mocking. maybe he needed to blatantly state he wanted an apology before this carried on any further.

jean pressed on, his fingers crisscrossing over one another, “the reason why i’ve kept flaking is because i was hanging out with mikasa, but not for the reason you think! i wasn’t trying to purposefully be an asshole to the one person who can see i’m not the biggest jerkoff at maria senior.” 

he paused again and spun one on his heel before letting out a breath that caught in the air for a moment, embodied in a cloud. “it was her idea, actually, to hang out and shit all the time these past few weeks. and it wasn’t for the sake of fooling around or making out or-”

“you can stop there, thanks.” marco’s ears burnt crimson.

“-y’know, doing shit like that? we were just talking. i could make excuses because i used to like her, and we could make up some stupid lie to cover it all up. she was coaching me through something because there’s something i’ve wanted to ask you for awhile now, and i’m clueless as a hell-”

marco’s grabbed onto his forearm, tightening his fingers momentarily when jean’s grey-green eyes went wide. “for god’s sake jean, just ask me. it’s not like i’m going to laugh at you or anything-”

“well you won’t _now,_ because i got advice. fuck i just, marco, i... shit,” he suddenly grabbed marco’s hands in his own, cold and red around his fingertips and his palms clammy, nearly missing at first, “do you want to be my boyfriend?”

marco’s thought process takes a minute to process that, or fifteen, he doesn’t fucking know, because _holy shit_. holy, fucking shit. he refocuses his eyes on jean, who is still holding on his hands and starting squeeze them. he can feel his best friend vibrating as he continues to think it through silently.

he rolls the word around on his tongue over and over, twirling it and tasting it like a pill or a lemon hard candy. like he can shape it and make it his own before he can give a verbal response.

“how long have you liked me?” he says instead, now looking down to where the fronts of their grimy trainers are nearly touching on the soggy yellow grass. 

jean swallows and drops his hands a bit. “months. since before you told me you were bi. since before you said you might like guys more than girls, and way before that time you dated sasha for three weeks at the beginning of our sophomore year.”

well, marco dated sasha braus briefly the previous year, and decided he was bisexual a little over a month after that. he quickly pieces together

he repeats, “how long?” quieter. 

jean just shakes his head and replies, hoarsely, “too long for it to matter anymore. so, will you?”

marco drops his hands from jean then and he knows, he knows that very second that everything jean was afraid of is supposedly happening, but he steps forwards and wraps his arms around jean’s neck. “of course i’ll be your boyfriend, you idiot.”

 

* * *

 

that friday after history, jean slinks off to his locker again without another word. marco grumbles to himself before he passes by mikasa in the hallway and, minutely, gives her a small, honest smile and a nod. she does the same before eren throws an arm over her shoulder loosely and starts rambling about something in his p.e. class, and leads her away down the opposite staircase.

marco jogs downstairs to his locker and squeezes through the clusters of juniors crowding the hallway, talking against lockers and making plans, texting and swirling their car keys around their fingers as they head home, to work, or to some close-by designation to hang-out before it snows, again, that evening. 

it’d been three days since jean asked him out and he said yes. he almost wonders why he did, because he can’t really pinpoint a time when he thought to himself ‘yeah, yeah i like jean. i’d date jean, hell, i’d totally kiss jean’, but they always seemed more than friends. reiner said they were always more like ‘queer platonic no homo pals’, which seemed more contradictory than anything else.

and now jean’s nowhere to be seen, again, and then marco’s phone rings in his pocket. he doesn’t pick it up right away, just leans again his open locker and slides his personal copy of _‘the color purple’_ into the space with a dull noise. it’s weird to think that he’s someone’s boyfriend now, or how it came to be in the first place, with his best friend confiding in an ex-crush for romantic advice and ignoring him for nearly three weeks because he was so damn nervous.

marco smiles to himself for a minute before locking everything away and slinging his nearly-empty backpack over one shoulder. he digs his phone out of his pocket as he heads off to the student parking lot, where he almost immediately spots someone familiar leaning against the hood of his hand-me-down black wrangler. before continuing on, he peers down at his phone.

_‘hey, are you busy tonight? (: - j’_  

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> here on tumblr too!!


End file.
